


Memento Vida (Remember Life)

by ArvisTaljik



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Falling In Love, First Times, Howling Commandos - Freeform, M/M, Period-typical Homophobia (World War II), Relatively accurate descriptions of the effects of Mustard Gas, Shrunkyclunks, Slow Burn, Things get better each time, Time Travel Fix-It, Time Travel in Loops, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-20 21:13:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16563233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArvisTaljik/pseuds/ArvisTaljik
Summary: Soulmates across time.In present day, near the village of Ornes, France, James "Bucky" Barnes works on his master's thesis in history while he fantasizes about meeting a WWII American GI.In 1944, during the Battle of Ornes, Steve Rogers is a young soldier facing the horrors of the battlefield.Mourning the death of his friends from enemy fire, Steve volunteers to bring the message for retreat so he can save everyone else in his battalion. While on his mission, mustard gas surrounds Steve and though he thinks he is dying, he finds himself in a peaceful green meadow where he literally trips over Bucky.Bucky doesn't believe Steve is who he says he is, a soldier from WWII. But a powerful attraction grows between them, and if Steve is truly a visitor from the past, then he is Bucky's dream come true. The problem is, Steve's soul wants to finish his mission, and time keeps yanking him back to relive his fateful last morning over and over, even as his heart and body long to stay with Bucky.Will Steve have to choose between Bucky and saving his friends? Will time come to an end for them both, leaving them both alone?





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this whole thing takes quite a few liberties with the events of World War II, but who cares about historical accuracy when it comes to getting our two boys together, yes?! :D
> 
> Ornes is a real place in France and since most of France was occupied by the Nazis during the war, we're just going to assume that Ornes was included and happened to be the location of a big battle fought between the Allies (mostly the US and UK) and the Nazis.
> 
> Any mistakes in this are my own.

     A mortar shell explodes at the far end of the trench, spraying black debris that slams into the mud and sends up the acrid scent of burnt tar and hot, damp earth.  Steve hunkers down with mud up to his ankles, his backside pressing against the broken end of a mortar gun, his hands on his helmet as they shake with the force of the blast.  He tries to stem his emotions as Major Fury stabs at the radio with a bit of metal wiring to see if he can get it to work again.  Between the mortar rounds, the radio responds with squawks and low pitched shrieks before falling silent.

     If the radio had been even six feet to the left, it would have been safe from being torn apart by the shell that had directly hit the trench mid-morning.  And if Happy, Junior and Pinky had been on the other side of Steve when the shell had hit, then they would be alive.  Then he would have someone to worry with, someone who would slap him on the back and bolster his courage so he could respond to Major Fury’s earlier request.

     He misses his friends, but he wants to be brave for them now.  Fury needs a volunteer to run across the trenches and the misty, frost-bitten fields to contact the officer in charge to get the final message for retreat.  The 107th needs to retreat or all of the 200+ men are going to be smashed to bloody bits and their families won’t hear from them come Christmas.

     It’s horrible.  Steve wonders how he ever imagined that signing up and shipping off would be an adventure worth having, something he could tell everybody about back home in Brooklyn.  There is no way he can convey the tragedy of it, the futility of a radio that won’t work, of trying not to look at the bodies of his friends that are currently beneath a tarp for decency’s sake.

     Whether there will be a break in the shelling so that they can be buried is anyone’s guess; the way it’s been going, they will likely get frozen in place, spattered with mud and bits of shrapnel, and nobody will be able to bury them until spring.  By which time, the war will either be over or they’ll all be dead.  Or both.

     Steve is shaking all over, and he tells himself it’s because he’s trying to warm himself up, but that’s another futility, and a lie he can barely hold on to.  The Nazis are coming closer with each passing hour.  The shells are louder and more on target, and soon they’ll all die.  All of the 107th’s efforts will come to nothing, and Steve will be another body beneath a tarp, and no one will have the energy to bury him.

     He’ll become part of the landscape, part of the stretch of brown mud and red blood, decorated with severed limbs.  The uniform he wears so proudly will turn into the tattered remnants of a desire to do good, to fight for one’s country, and to keep families and children and grandmothers safe.  At least that’s what the recruitment posters had stated, and behind every one had been the American flag, rippling with patriotism and an overwhelming urgency.

     Steve had signed up alone, but had soon met his three friends during training.  They’d stuck together, sharing the burden of fear, bolstering each other up, proud to fight and do right.  Only it was wrong, so wrong because what’s happening now seems to be for no reason at all, and everything they do as a unit seems like they’re just going through the motions.

     Men keep dying, though the sudden silence across the top of the trenches indicates that the Nazis seem to have let up for the moment.  Which leaves Steve alone with Major Fury, and on the verge of losing it.  He’s shaking with the effort of not crying, though his face is hot with tears he keeps having to blink away as he tries to focus on what the Major is doing.

     “The wire goes under,” says Steve with a croak.  “Under on the left.”

     “Oh, yeah?” asks Fury, his voice gruff.

     He doesn’t look at Steve, all of his attention on the radio.  He moves the wire as Steve suggest, and while this brings a sound from the transmitter, it ends in another ineffectual squawk.

     The worst of it is that Steve previously thought that the radio was too much in the open and should be moved, just in case.  He didn’t want to step on Fury’s toes, though, as the major had only just taken over from Colonel Pierce, and so he didn’t say anything.

     Pierce had been the worst commander anyone had ever seen, and the muttered comments among the men had almost grown into a roar.  Though Steve might have given him some leeway, the Colonel had taken the coward’s way out, run off in the night, and had not been heard from since.  With the tension among the men, Steve didn’t want to point out that the radio was in harm’s way.  It may have been seen as a challenge to the chain of command, which is the last thing Steve wants to do.

     He’d refrained from talking about Pierce, and had generally kept his mouth shut since day one.  But, if he’d not done that, if he’d given into his natural proclivity to think with his mouth open, they might have a radio now, might already be in an officially sanctioned withdrawal, and Happy, Junior, and Pinky wouldn’t be dead.  They’d be beside him as they all scuttle to the rear of the battle and clamber into trucks to be taken somewhere a bit safer than they are now.

     It’s all his fault.  All of it.  His lungs feel as though they’re running out of air, and his stomach dips so hard that he thinks he might shit himself in fear.  The only thing for it is to do something so it doesn’t get worse.  And that means answering the major’s question from earlier that morning.

     “Sir?” asks Steve, though he realizes that his voice is too hoarse to be heard.  “Sir?” he asks again, more loudly this time.

     “It just sparked,” says Fury, his focus completely on the radio.  “If I move that wire again, I’m going to fry this fucking thing.”

     Steve scrambles up from where he was, his boots slipping on the mud as he surges forward to land on his knees at the major’s side.

     “Sir, I’ll go,” says Steve.  “I’ll take the message and bring the code back.”

     Fury’s hands freeze in the midst of what he’s doing, and then he slowly turns his head.  The major’s eyes are red-rimmed, and his face is covered in smoke and grime that seems to have pushed its way into his pores.  He doesn’t’ smile as he looks at Steve, and his expression is grim.

     “You might not come back,” says Fury.  “In fact it’s a death sentence.  Do you want that?”

     Major Fury is so unlike Pierce in every way; Steve knows it’s a death sentence, so Fury, not one to suffer fools, is making sure that Steve knows exactly what he’s getting into.  A zigzag run across a field of dead bodies, destroyed vehicles, guns, gouged earth, and barbed wire, all the while dodging bullets and shrapnel and mustard gas.

     “There’s no other way,” says Steve.  He wipes his hand across his upper lip, and takes a hard breath, feeling his metal ID tag like a circle of cold ice in the middle of his throat.  “You said so this morning.  If we don’t get the order to withdraw, we’re all going to die.  Right here in this trench.”

     He didn’t add that they could just withdraw anyway, without the order, and save a whole lot of lives.  But Fury is a seasoned Army officer, and while he might take it upon himself to take command of a regiment that is currently without a commander, it’s not in his makeup to make such a call without orders to back it up.

     Steve could try to convince Fury to overstep his authority, but that will only get everyone irritated, and as they’re already so edgy, it’s the worst way he can contribute.  The best thing for him to do, besides throw himself on a land mine, is to step up and volunteer.  It won’t bring his friends back, but it will give their deaths meaning.  Or will it?  At any rate, it will be better than sitting with his ass in the mud watching Fury mess with equipment in a way that’s probably only making things worse.

     If only Steve had told him to move the radio.  If only Steve had told his friends to sit someplace other than where they had.  If only Steve had been born at a different time, and had missed this war in its entirety.  A hundred years ago or a hundred years from now, it makes no difference to him.  But he’s here now, and he needs to do his best for the sake of his friends’ memories.

     He stands up and make an ineffectual pass at the front of his uniform.  He winces as his finger touch dried blood, the source of which he doesn’t want to identify, but is probably spatter from Pinky’s head as it had exploded.  Pinky would have gone with him, big and silent and close by as they crossed the field of battle to carry the message.

     “I’ll go,” says Steve.

     Fury stands up too, though he doesn’t reach out to shake Steve’s hand.  Steve is glad about the lack of that gesture because that would have truly meant that Major Fury didn’t expect him to return, but is only sending him because there’s nobody else who’s willing to go.

     “Find Colonel Walker,” says Fury.  “Give him half the message, and he’ll know I need the other half.  He’ll tell you what that is, and when I have the whole message I can pull us all back.  Tell him I sent you, you got all that?”

     “Yes, sir,” says Steve.  His heart is thumping in his chest, threatening to push its way out, and he knees start to shake.  “I’ll bring the message back, I promise.”

     “Don’t make promises you might not be able to keep, son,” Fury states.  He shakes his head and looks down at the busted radio before looking back up at Steve.  His expression is so deep and serious that Steve knows he’s going to die the moment he steps out of the trench.  The alternative, however, is to stay in the trench and watch while all his friends’ bodies freeze in the mud, taking his heart with them as they become one with the earth, and that he can’t hope to bear.

     “Here’s a canteen,” says Fury.  “You might need to kill some Nazis, and you won’t believe how thirsty you can get when you’re running hard, terrified enough to piss yourself.”

     Steve takes the canteen and loops it over his neck and shoulder, then hands his rifle across his chest in the other direction.  He’s isn’t exactly armed to the teeth, but he has a pouch of bullets and can give someone a run for their money.  After that, he’ll be out of bullets and dead in a ditch somewhere.

     He can’t think about that now.  He needs to go over the top and start running.  The Colonel will be in a trench at the back of the field, at least that’s the general idea in most battles.

     “That way, right?” asks Steve.  He points over his shoulder with his thumb.

     “More over that way,” says Fury.  “Straight across and then over.  He’ll be in the right quadrant.  You won’t see any flags, but it’s going to have more sandbags and look a damn sight tidier than where we are now.”

     “Yes, sir.” Steve replies.

     He straightens up and gives Fury the most efficient salute he’s ever managed, out of respect.  Then, no allowing himself one last glimpse at the pile of bodies at the end of the trench, he pushes his way past the three soldiers manning a howitzer that’s almost out of shells and the small cottage whose roof is half gone.

     The sprawls of barbed wire along the top of each trench is intertwined with dark flags of smoke that twist and move as though they’re alive.  The sun is a smudge through the grown and black haze, and the smell of hot oil and human remains shoots itself into his lungs with his first breath.  The air is cold and is seems as though frost speckles the air like little bits of diamond half made yellow by the smoke from fires and the general exhalation of despair and gloom and death.  Steve watches as a shell explodes a hundred feet to his left, turns the other way, and starts running.

     The idea is to get out of the line of fire, for that’s where the colonel would be found.  The easiest way is to follow the line of trenches, to run inside of the, along the bottom, and make his way there.  He starts to run, his canteen bouncing, his rifle banging into his thigh the whole while.

     At the edge of the trenches are the round tops of helmets.  Beneath those glimmer the exhausted, tired eyes of soldiers who watch him go, who know where he’s headed, and who has no hope that he will make it.  A few soldiers stand and fire beyond Steve to draw enemy attention away from him when he has to cross over the top of a trench to get to the next one.  The shots zing around him anyway.  If he slows down, he’s going to take a hit, so he keeps low in the trenches and continues running.

     His boots slip as he heads down a small hollow, and he almost falls to his knees as he goes up the other side;  it’s like trying to run up a waterfall, only this one is made of mud, with bits of shell and hunks of rock mixed in.  Just as Steve got halfway to the top, he hears the high-pitched pop of a canister as it opens, and even before he smells the bitter tang, a yellow cloud of gas descends around him like a blanket of pure poison.

     He brings his hand to his mouth, and staggers to the top of the trench, and though he keeps his breaths shallow, he feels his lungs collapsing, and falls to his knees, coughing up spit, his hands in the mud, his eyes closed.  The yellow swirl fills his brain until there’s nothing left but an empty ache and the sting in his lungs.  He barely feels his head hit the mud and then sighs, thinking that it would be good to stay right where he is, for what does it matter anyhow?

And then it becomes blackness.  So much blackness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This particular iteration of these characters would tend to follow the original depiction of the Howling Commandos from the comics (white Nick, not black Nick, sorry Mr. S.L.Jackson...) but I've made him an officer instead of an enlisted Sergeant. If you want Sammy J's Nick Fury to be the one in this story, then go right on ahead. Doesn't matter which is which, for the purposes of the story. I personally have an easier time imagining Sammy J's voice for Fury, so that's who I'm going with. But that's just me. :P
> 
> Questions, comments, critiques? Lemme know yo!


	2. Chapter 2

     Bucky checks his notes, which he keeps in a suitably old-fashioned canvas notebook, and continues typing on his laptop.  It’s always easier if he just starts and keeps typing for a good solid hour.  That way, he doesn’t have the time or brain energy to doubt his own ideas.  Besides he’s on the tail end of the project, so there is no shifting to another thesis now, no changing themes.  No going back.  Soon the miracle of his grant will come to an end, and his time in the cottage near the little French village of Ornes, where once the brave 107th Infantry Regiment had met its sad fate, would come to an end as well.

     He pauses to consult the chart that the university’s meteorology department had emailed him, though he doesn’t really need to.  He already has it memorized, as well as the five other spreadsheets, and the 15 colored charts that indicate the weather over the course of the battle.  He’d picked this one battle because his advisor had told him to focus, which would keep his thesis from going all over the place.

     It’s slightly amusing to know so much about a single event, but it’s a little sad too, with the futility of it all.  The lack of supplies, plus the terrible rain that had remained positioned over the small valley, made life in the trenches a living hell.  The men in the regiment had all been young and inexperienced, fighting and dying without having much effect on the overall war, which had ended three years after the regiment had met its fateful demise.

     Bucky pulls up Google and enters  _WWII_ , which the search engine finishes for him, as he’s entered the term so many times that he and the search phrase are practically an item.  He doesn’t even have to capitalize it, though he does, out of respect.  Then he clicks on  _Images_ , and scrolls through what comes up.

     It’s always the same, hundreds and hundreds of black and white images of battlefields.  Some of the images are streaked with the dust that was on the camera lens when the photo was taken, other scratched, some sepia toned.  Then he types  _soldiers_ , and presses enter, and sighs as the familiar array of pictures of World War II soldiers displayed before him.

     The young men who had fought the war had had no idea what they were getting into.  At the beginning, it must have seemed like a lark to join a war as their uncles and grandfathers had.  But the brutal conditions in the trenches, the lack of technology to coordinate efforts over vast tracks of land, not to mention pandemics of flu and cholera, all of that had been bad enough.  To Bucky though, the worst of it had been the innocence that had been destroyed.

     If he really wanted to torture himself, he’d have entered  _American WWII GIs_  in the search field, as the nickname would bring up hundreds of pictures of young American soldiers fresh-faced and ready to ship out to war, but his heart isn’t in it this morning.  He can’t bear to see them, not when he’s writing about the lack of bullets, the bad food, and the cold front that had lingered for the area for weeks, making them cold and damp and miserable.

     He is fascinated, however, with how they look, though it’s not always good to let himself give in to his obsession.  He loves their All-American faces, sweet and innocent, their eyes full of adventure.  Their hair is typically greased back in a jaunty way, as if they assumed that once they got to the front that there’d be more pomade and mirrors available so that they could check their look once they’d applied it.

     So he doesn’t do any more searches.  Instead, after writing a few hundred more words, he gets up and stretches, and thinks about making some coffee.  The French have the best coffee he’s ever tasted, smooth and silky; even the regular stuff is miles better than it was in the States, though maybe that has to do with the lack of haste in which the French drink it.  Though that’s only in town, as there is nobody in the cottage to watch him whip up a cup in his French press, and then stand there drinking it black, hoping it will wake him up enough so he can finish his stint for the day.

     Or maybe he should go for a run now?  Anything to take him away from the dull task of replicating spreadsheets of data into small, manageable tables.  He hates working with tables, and he can never remember how to get them to break between rows instead of across them.  Besides, it’s good to step back from his obsession every now and then so that he won’t be so much the mad grad student who can’t think of anything else other than GIs or coffee rations, or canvas tents, or canvas puttees, or canvas-covered canteens with lift-the-dot fasteners, which had been invented in the Civil War, or before that—

     With a shake of his head, Bucky puts on a pair of sneakers that will instantly mark him as being an American, but he isn’t going into town, only across the fields.  Then he grabs a sweater and heads out into the misty afternoon.  He can leave the door unlocked, as he usually does, unless he’s heading into town or will be gone for a while.

     Back home, he was lonely, just as he is now, mostly because he was always involved in his work, and if he wasn’t working then he was probably out running or hitting the gym.  But it’s also because nobody else knows he’s doing a master’s thesis on how weather affected the battle of the 107th Infantry Regiment outside the village or Ornes.  Nobody from his college days could understand his passion for the subject, let alone take the time to listen.  He had a tendency to bore everyone he knows within moments of meeting them, and thus his loneliness had grown.

     At least in France, he can imagine that he’s alone because there’s nobody around; the grant that he’d received had included a stipend and use of a cottage that had once stood at the edge of the trenches that the 107th had dug.  The cottage was a mile from town, which had a compact but thorough museum and history center about the war.  Most academics, however, prefer to study the area that had been closer to the Western Front.  That was, incidentally, closer to Paris, where all the amenities of life could be found, according to one of his very few fellow students.

     Bucky had been to Paris, of course, you can’t come to France without going, and it had been wonderful in a lot of ways.  In the end, though, Paris was just another city like New York City, big and crowded and noisy.  He told himself he was here, in Ornes, because he preferred the quiet countryside, which he did.  Except now that the field stretched out before him, the cool mist surrounding him, he can’t decide if he feels contented or lonely.  Perhaps a bit of both.  So he begins his run.

     The air is fresh on his face, and a keen wind picks up as he clambers up one of the mounds of earth.  The edges of the trenches had been dug long enough ago that they were softened by time and covered with a carpet of green grass.  He’s high enough that he can look across at the cemetery, which occupies the flat valley at the edge of the trenches.  It’s dotted with white crosses, ten rows of twenty, two hundred and one in all.  There is the memorial at the far end with an inscription to the over 200 brave men of the 107th Infantry Regiment who’d lost their lives here.

     Some days he liked to jog all the way around and stand in front of the memorial.  He liked to admire the marbled carved to look like American and French flags, crossed across their flagpoles.  Beneath the flags, the stone was meant to look like mourning swags, but which, especially in the rain, looked like cold stone that couldn’t possibly reflect, let alone empathize with, the condition of being mortal and dying in a strange country far from home.

     Today is one of those days where he thinks he can’t bear it.  Instead, he faces away from the memorial and continues in the opposite direction, heading over the acre or so of earth, the rippled rows of lush green where once the battlements of barbed wire and old railroad ties had fortified the trenches and kept out the enemy.

     The wind is in his face now, but it whips the cobwebs from his thoughts and allows him to just look and see without taking mental notes.  To not think about what will happen after he finishes his exams, oral and written, to not thing about what it will be like to be an associate professor whose days and nights are so focused that he will actually get paid for feeling bad about American GIs.  He feels bad for all the young men, even though who had been among the enemy.  The war was foolish; an attempt to crush and suppress, topped off with a maniacal bid for genocide against the innocent.  Had there been any benefits from the war?  Few, very few.

     Bucky shakes his head, continuing his run along the top of a trench, his sneakers growing damp with every foot fall in the wet grass.  Losing himself as he presses on, he tries to imagine that he’s a young soldier, perhaps on watch in the middle of the night, or when dawn was just breaking over the edge of the battlefield.

     There might be the smell of coffee, or the mournful, faraway sound of voices as the men woke up and prepared for another day of fighting.  What would that coffee taste like?  Who would his friends be?  What would his rank be?  How did he feel about the shovel he’d used to dig the trenches he and his buddies were not hunkered down in?  Where was the shovel, and did he have blisters from using it?

     These are the thoughts that really drive him, really interest him.  He wants to know what it had felt like to be a GI, to really  _be_  one.  Only this is the path that led his thesis advisor to scold him for getting distracted from the main point, and which had driven off his more casual friends and the guys he met with on the weekend to go running, workout, or go to the bar.

     One friend had actually told him that gay guys aren’t supposed to be as geeky as Bucky is, which seems a rather limited view, not to mention rude.  For who was to say?  Bucky likes guys, but he likes burying his nose in a book and spending hours in the library.  He also enjoys running and working out but also pretending, as he is now, that he’s somebody else from another time.

     He stops and salutes an imaginary commander on watch so that he can be relieve of his post and go get something to eat.  There would only be bully beef and tea, and maybe some sugar, if he were lucky.  He’d eat with is pals, and together they would make jokes about how hard the biscuits are, and laugh in the face of danger.  The maybe they’d stack shells so they could be used in battle, firing at the enemy.

     In truth, though, Bucky’s imaginings always turn away from actual fighting and end with an image of him in a circle of soldiers, one of whom is bending to light a primus stove so they can make some hot tea.  That’s the moment that always draws him in, that huddle of soldiers, their faces lit by some imaginary light as if in a painting, jointed together in adversity, strengthened by each other.  That’s what he really wanted to be a part of, and what he always felt he’d missed out on.

     Which is foolish, because the price to pay for that is being in involved in a war where the possibility of dying is almost one hundred percent.

     Bucky reaches the far end of the field where the trenches ended and it dips down as through fading away as they turn into the paved road that leads to the nearby town.  The edge of the field is marked by a line of trees that gives the whole area a solitary feel.  Standing there always feels as though he’s miles from anywhere, though only a single mile separates Bucky from the small town with its shops, and museum, the patisserie that sells mostly sweet things, the one that sells mostly daily bread, and the string of restaurants, of which there are surprisingly many for a such a small place, and the solitary community center/gym.

     He turns and starts walking back, trying to resist the impulse to take off his shoes so that he can connect with the earth.  Truth be told, his real desire is to touch his skin to a flake of dust that somebody from the war had touched.  He keeps his thoughts from the idea that he might one day find bone, or blood-darkened earth caked around a bayonet because it’s been over half a century since the fateful battle, and surely all of that stuff has been dug up by now.  But the image is still a vivid one, so he takes off his sneakers and socks anyway so he can at least stand there and think about the GI’s in this one little moment, and pretend that he’s one of them.

     Which, as it inevitably does, leads him to lie down in the wet grass along the slope of a trench, his arms and legs spread wide to absorb as much of the energy of the place as he could.  He also feels that if he holds still enough, he can absorb the memory he’s sure the earth still holds, an idea that he’s never shared with anyone because no one would believe him.  Worse, they’d probably make fun of him, and while he’s a steady sort of person, this one thing, this tiny part of his heart, is one piece he can’t bear to have broken.

     With the soft mist falling on his face, he looks up at the sky and thinks about being a soldier.  He breathes so slowly that he becomes almost still  This is one of his favorite moments, when the cottage seems a faraway place that he might have made up in his imagination, and technology is even further away than that.  Where the world is only the sky above, the grass below, his breath misting in the cool air, mingling with the breather of other soldiers, his beloved American GI’s, from years past.

     He ignores the fact that the dampness is soaking into his shirt, and that soon his spine will feel like it’s been fused to the earth in one line column of ice.  In another minute, he will realize how foolish this is and rise into consciousness.  He needs to come back to reality, go back into the cottage, change into dry clothes, and put another good two hours into his thesis work.  Then he can have something to eat, another cup of coffee, and then he can pull up Netflix and do his absolute best to watch something other than a movie or documentary about World War II.


	3. Chapter 3

     Steve surges up from where he’s fallen, his eyes wide open, his hands out in front of him.  Instinctively he reaches for his rifle, wondering why he hasn’t managed to pierce himself through the heart with his bayonet when he’d fallen.  He clutches at his canteen to make sure the metal lid is still screwed on so he doesn’t lose all his water, which he’ll need to keep from being dehydrated because he’s just about to piss himself, just like Fury said.

     His knees are soaked, and he’s cold all the way through, as though he’s been in a block of ice.  He reaches up to touch his head; mud caked through his short hair falls in damp clumps.  He steps forward with jerky movement and a strong sense of  _what-the-hell?_   Before him are row upon row of white crosses across a green, frost-topped field.  At the far end is a larger cross, also white, and he sees the stone swags that he thinks are meant to represent a flag or funeral bunting, and squints.

     Where are the trenches?  If he draws his eyes along the edge of the right in the right way, he can see the top of the most recent one he’d been running along, but that’s impossible.  The sun is coming up over the trees with bright, gold shards cutting through the chilly morning, sending fog up from the earth, dressing the air with wisps of ghost-like tendrils.  The will soon grab him if he doesn’t move, except he can’t because the mustard gas had been all over him, and he fallen and maybe hit his head.  Is he unconscious or dreaming?  Or maybe he had died and now he’s a ghost?

     There is no war.  There’s nobody, no soldier, no barbed wire, no smoke, and noticeably, no sounds of mortar shells exploding. No shouts of command, no cries of despair, no movement at all.  There is only stillness and the white crosses across a green field, and the edge of what could have been a trench.  A sky full of frosty, jagged clouds as the blue begins to break through.  Larks singing somewhere in the bare trees.

     Over the rise he think he sees the roofline of the cottage so that, at least, was familiar.  If he moves toward the center of the crosses, which is eerie as hell, the cottage comes fully into view.  Steve knows he has to get to a high point so he can figure out where he is, and starts running.

     The movement jars his head, and his lungs feel seared by gas, the burning taste in his mouth making him want to throw up.  His heart is beating so fast, but he can’t stop running until he makes it to the edge of the field and gets closer to the cottage.  A moment later, he can see the ruin that before had been only a pile of stone with one wall, but its carved frame against the sky like a broken hand reaching for help is now an entire, well-tended building.

     Steve has only a moment to wonder why or how such a ruin has been repaired so quickly when he trips over a body on the ground.  Thinking it’s the dead body of a soldier whose face he doesn’t want to recognize, Steve pushes his rifle away from his body and rolls as he falls.  He braces his elbows and points his rifle at the body as it sits up, one of the living dead.

     His arms are shaking and his breath comes in heavy jerks, sweat rolling down the side of his face.  He wipes the back of his hand across his forehead to keep it from getting into this eyes.  Gripping the rifle again, tighter, he points it at the man, and wants to shout.

     But what can he say?  He needs to figure that out before he starts blabbing, as that’s the sensible thing to do.  And then the words spill out anyway, in a rush, as they tend to do when he can’t put the brakes on them.

     “Where did the ruin go?  Where are the bodies?  Where is the mud…where is the damn  _WAR_?”  He’s almost screaming when he stops, mouth open, gasping for air.

     The man on the grass leans back on his arms to support himself.  He doesn’t seem the least bit worried that Steve is pointing a rifle directly at him, though he’s frowning, as though confused, which of course he would be because where in the world is the guy’s uniform?

     “Where did you come from?” asks the man, his dark brown lowering.  He looks perturbed because Steve managed to leave a streak of mud across his shirt when he tripped over him.  Moreover, the shirt is a white button down that Steve hasn’t seen on anybody since he enlisted.

     Nobody has enough soap to keep something that white.  Everything soldiers wear is designed to disappear into the earth, the blend in with the countryside where the fighting is.  Yet this strange fellow is wearing the white shirt and those blue jean dungarees that farmers wear.

     In spite of the odd clothes, the stranger draws Steve’s gaze to him in the way that Pinky always did.  He has strong legs and looks incredibly fit and healthy, as though he’s never gone hungry a day in his life.  He’s not clean shaven but looks only a few razor swipes from being so, with his dark hair, the color of dark mocha, cut away from his face.  He’s handsome even though he’s frowning and squinting at Steve, as through with displeasure at being disrupted from lollygagging in the grass.  Which begs the question, what is he doing without any shoes with a war on?

     “I’m asking you again, where did you come from?” asks the man.

     “From the 107th,” says Steve, incredulous that this man doesn’t already know this because the soldiers from his battalion were all around him only moments ago.  “From the 107th, can’t you see the bodies?  The trenches?”

     Steve’s voice rises in pitch and then warbles away as the man gets up, feet bare in the grass, scowl still plastered on his face.

     “Those trenches are from World War II,” says the man with a snort, as though Steve is being foolish.  “Why are you wearing that getup?” asks the man.  Then he stops.  “I’m sorry did you say the 107th?  Are you role playing?”

     Steve doesn’t know what role playing is, but it’s obvious that the man doesn’t think very highly of it, and thinks even less of Steve for presumably participating in it.  Steve decides to do what he does best, deny.  Which is what he’s been doing since the war started:  deny that it’s that bad, deny that he’s terrified as hell all the time, deny that it’s the absolute worst thing imaginable.

     He tightens his fingers around his rifle and holds it firmly in front of himself, elbows planted in the cold grass.  The grass is so wet that in spite of his wool uniform, he’s going to get soaked through.  And then he’ll get pneumonia and then he’ll die.  At then he’ll be with his buddies, at least he’ll be with his Pa, who died in before the war began, and before Steve had enlisted.  That’s a sad tale Steve has barely been able to share with anybody, though there isn’t much point, considering everyone he’s met has a sad story of their own to tell.

     With nothing to lose, Steve points his rifle at the man, tightens his shoulders, and crooks his finger to pull the trigger.  But this man is quick, even in bare feet, as he reaches down with both hands on the stock below the blade, twists the rifle sideways, and jerks the entire thing out of Steve’s hands.  Steve’s entire body goes hollow with shock, his breath leaving him in a gasp.

     He thinks the man is going to shoot him.  Instead though, the man opens his palms and lifts the rifle close to his face to examine it.

     “This is a museum quality piece,” says the man, sighing softly, his eyes light.  “Where did you get it?  Did you steal it?”

     “No!” Steve responds.  He gets up and reaches for the rifle but the man pulls it out of reach.  “It’s a Springfield M1 and it’s mine, I got it when I finished basic training.  It’s mine because they gave it to me to kill Nazis!”

     “Kill Nazis?” asks the man.  His eyes are a flinty gray, and he scowls briefly at Steve, his dark brows drawing together.  “Do you think we’re at war with the Nazis?”

     “Yes, we are!” shouts Steve, lunging for the rifle, since it’s been drilled into his head since the day he’d been issued it that it’s his most valuable possession and the main thing that will help him survive and win the war.  “Because Hitler invaded France!  Because American’s couldn’t stand by and watch while…”

     “Yeah, I know all that,” says the man as he backs away from Steve, shaking his head.  “But that doesn’t explain why you’re digging your heels into the dirt like it’s going on right now.  Or why you’re dressed in a uniform that should be in a museum, just like this antique rifle.”

     “It’s a new rifle,” says Steve, reaching again.  “And it’s  _mine_!”

     “I highly doubt that,” the man responds, coolly.  He cradles the rifle along his arms and strokes the stock gently, running his thumb across where Steve had scratched his initials when it was issued to him.  “Why on earth would you damage such a fine piece by carving your initials in the wood?”

     “I did that so I’d know which one was mine,” says Steve, confused by the man’s obvious care for the rifle.  “In case a shell comes, in case I drop it, in case…”

     “Why do you keep talking like there’s a war on?” the man asks.

     “Because there  _is_!” Steve shouts at the top of his lungs and barrels forward in a desperate surge of energy, hands out, shoulders braced, reaching for his rifle.

     At the last moment, the man steps back and braces his feet, holding the rifle pointed forward at Steve, with as much grace as anybody Steve has trained with.  Steve is about to be pierced by the bayonet end of his own rifle, and die at the hands of a man who insists there is no war but who handles the rifle as if he’d been born to carry it.

     Reaching toward his rifle, Steve slips on the wet grass that is shockingly cold on his hands.  He tries to roll into a defensive ball as he’d been taught, but instead slides to a stop, face down, splayed out, ready to be sliced into pieces.

     That doesn’t happen, even though Steve’s ribs hurt from the fall, his lungs ache with trying to get enough air, and his throat is tight with trying not to scream piteously for mercy.  He’s going to piss himself in another minute, and then he’ll be dead, and all this will have been for nothing.

     “Can I help you?” asks the man.  “Come on, I’m not going to hurt you.  I just don’t want you hurting me.”

     Rolling on his back, Steve expects to see the rifle pointed at his heart, but though the man holds the rifle at the ready, his right hand on the stock, his left on the barrel below the blade, he doesn’t move into position to shoot or anything.  Instead he looks at Steve with his brows drawn together, an expression of concentration on his face.

     “You’re not from around here, are you?” the man asks, as though puzzling it out.  “And you’re not French.”

     “No, I’m not,” says Steve with some force.  He doesn’t hate the French, though their language sounds a lot like babble to him, and the gestures the make with their hands confuse him.  He’s rather fond of the cheese that he’s tasted, but he’s American and he needs to make this calm stranger understand that.  “I’m American, through and through.”

     “Okay then,” the man says with a laugh as though Steve has said something funny.  “But get up before you get soaked and catch your death.”

     “ _You’re_  in bare feet,” Steve says, accusing and pointing at the same time.

     “True, but I’m going in the house now, and you can come too, and dry off.  Then we’ll figure out where you belong.”

     The man reaches down, extending his hand to Steve.  He is muscled as all get-out, as though he’s trained for a war he professes isn’t going on.

     Steve is sure he’s going to get yanked with some force, as the man is nearly the same height as himself and broad through the shoulders.  Instead, the man takes Steve’s forearm in a firm grip and then gently pulls him to his feet.

     For a moment, Steve is close enough to see the little black specks in the man’s gray eyes, and the line across his cheek where his five o’clock shadow ends.  The curve of his smile.  The white teeth pressed against his lips.

     Steve turns his head because he’s kept his secret this long, though Pinky might have started figuring it out only days ago, days before he died…

     “Hey, kid,” the man says as he lets go.  “I’m not going to hurt you.  I just want to help you.”

     “I’m not a kid,” says Steve rudely before he can stop himself.  “I’m twenty and I’ll be twenty one next year so stop calling me a kid.”

     “Okay, okay,” the man says, placatingly.

     As Steve moves out of reach of the man’s grip, he can see that the man thinks Steve is funny.  This isn’t surprising, as that’s the reaction many of the guys in the battalion, except for his buddies, and Major Fury, as the latter views everything with serious eyes.

     “You can laugh all you want,” says Steve.  “I don’t care.  I just want to get back to my battalion and continue my mission, and see if I can save some lives.”

     “Which battalion did you say again?” asks the man, a quirky smile playing across his mouth as though he means to humor Steve.

     “The 107th, or can’t you see my stripes?  This badge?” Steve points to his uniform, which would tell anyone with any sense where he belongs.  “Lance corporal, second class gunner, in case you didn’t know.”

     “I  _do_  know,” says the man, though his words come out more slowly.  “You did say the 107th, right?  And we are talking about the battle of Ornes?  That battalion was wiped out, and the village was too.  I mean, there’s people’s living there now, but it’s more like a bedroom community…”

     “What do you mean wiped out?  All of them,  _all_  of them?  Nobody was saved?  How could you  _know_  that?” asks Steve.  He knows he’s screaming, but can’t stop, a sense of panic rising in his chest so hard and fast that he’s certain his heart is about to stop.

     “Because of the records,” says the man, somehow calm in the face of Steve’s agitation.  “In the museum in Ornes, where I’ve been doing the research for my…don’t you see the crosses, the memorial?”

     “Yes, I see them,” says Steve, though his voice cracks and his breath is coming in such short spurts that his vision is developing spots.  Round circles begin to block out the cloud-draped sunlight and the only think he can focus on is the man’s gray eyes.  “But I don’t understand…”

     He’s falling to the ground, and the wet grass is about to embrace him.  If he can just stay low and catch his breath, slow his heart, he can figure out what’s going on and get back to the 107th.  He’ll return without the code needed for retreat, but at least he’ll be with them, his commander, his friends, with people he knows, when he dies.


End file.
